Bound to be Crazy

Holiday Greetings All,

   Sometimes, I assess my life and all the "parts" that make up me and I feel like there's no way I'm NOT cukoo-for-cocoa puffs, or at least bound to be. My life is messy, largely in part by choice. I still rent from my ex-love's parents, I'm still estranged from my parents, I still beat myself up every day, and I'm still a roller coaster of "will" and "won't." Yes, I will try. No, I won't get past this. Yes, I will come out on top. No, I won't make it through today. Yes, I will repair myself. No, I won't ever be proud of what I've become. Yes, I will find peace. No, I'll never figure out how to love and be loved.

   Sometimes, I get so wrapped up in analyzing, re-analyzing, and over-analyzing who I am and how I react to things and I end up getting, just, so sick of myself! I can't imagine how the people around me manage to be around me! I'm bossy, demanding, and unappreciative. I'm the opposite of fun. I'm a people repellent. Then I feel stupid for saying such negative things. I'm a million miles a minute.

  I made it through the holidays...I think? Worse for wear. I cried all through Christmas day. I cried all through my birthday. I watched my ex boyfriend be happy and functional in his new found relationship. It made me feel embarrassed about myself and how far I...maybe haven't come. I just spent the majority of December in tears and I don't know why I do it to myself. Being rejected by my family still gets me every time and I feel dumb for not being able to accept that I am without family. But then I think, "Well why am I alone? Maybe it's me. Of course it's me. What have I done?"

   The holidays and my birthday turns me into the biggest brat. I don't know how to be grateful. I don't know how to be quietly giving. I don't know how to "go with the flow." I need order, attendance, and timeliness around the holidays and my birthday. I need smiles, compliments, and meaningful gestures. I need and undying, unlimited amount of love. And it still ends up leaving me feeling empty and unseen, come Christmas morning. I have so much back-tracking, and making up for what I didn't have I still feel like I need to do. I just need so much. Too much?

   I feel like parents give you the tools to develop healthy relationships, plan well for yourself, and they teach you how to be one of your biggest support systems.....Healthy parents anyway. Growing up, I don't think I ever once saw my mom support herself. She had no confidence. She wasn't ever happy. And she never truly understood what it felt like and meant to be loved. I didn't grow up with any of the right kind of modeling and I certainly never really felt supported. My mom used to take pictures of my tears, amplify my failures, and remind me why friends and boyfriends must have chosen to leave me. I fight really hard to be positive and supportive of myself and others but sometimes I feel like the behavior that was modeled to me as a child sticks and I get a little nasty and pretty negative when I really just need someone to step in and be my support system.

A Survivor's Story-Depression: Anonymous (Male)

This is a story sent into me. To send your story, email me at stargee@me.com

   What young child wouldn’t want to fit in? I just happened to be chubby and awkward. I found acceptance among a small group of boys. I didn’t think anything of the fact that the other kids generally avoided us, or that these boys weren’t really kind to me, or anyone else. Snake tongued teasing turned into pushing and shoving, and later, punches and kicks. I was at the bottom of the proverbial totem pole. I told myself it was better than having no friends, I just bowed my head and hid my tears. 


   Through middle school and my early high school years, I tried numerous times to break away, but always found rejection amongst my peers, or harassment from the other boys in the group at my attempt to leave. I felt useless, ugly, and unwanted. To no surprise, these people didn’t last long through high school, and by the virtue of high school drop outs, I was free from their clutches, but the damage was done. I was a poorly adjusted high school sophomore with absolutely no self confidence. 
When I was committed to the adolescent mental health ward at St. Mary’s Hospital in San Francisco after staring down a train and talking myself out of it at the last second, they diagnosed me with acute clinical depression. 


   Senior year in high school was a whirlwind of therapy, medications, and mental health facilities. To this day I look back on graduating as a major accomplishment for me. Since that time, I’ve spent a great deal reflecting on my life, and how it’s led to who I am today. Depression for me is like a fog, like having weights strapped to your legs. It prevents you from really enjoying life, from feeling joy and satisfaction in life. Having it kicked and beaten into you that you are ugly, worthless, and useless, isn’t something that you can shake off after a round in therapy. Depression is something that is something that affects you down to your very core, it is a virus that consumes it’s host. On my “bad” days, I feel as if I have no friends. I feel that I am ugly, and worthless, and sometimes I feel as if no one would miss me if I were gone. 


   Depression isn’t a simple malady as it’s made out to be on those cheesy antidepressant commercials. If you are truly depressed it is a merciless beast, a ball and chain wrapped around your neck.. High school was definitely the worst for me, those were my darkest days. I feel as if the worst is over, I am working professional photographer, I love my job, and have a great relationship with my parents whom I live with. I’m in the homestretch now, but I still have a long, day to day struggle ahead of me. I can see, for the first time in my life, a light at the end of the tunnel.

Sex+Sexual Abuse: A Survivor's Story- Anonymous (Male)

This was a story sent into me. To send your story, email me at stargee@me.com

   I am a survivor of drugs and rape. My sister got into drugs first after my parents split up during their divorce, ( I happened to find poems from the man that my mother was having a affair with and showed them to my father ) which then began 8 years of hell... 


   Anyways with the drug problems and the divorce going on at the same time, I noticed that life was going to become different forever. First, I started off with pot and cigarettes, following in my sister's footsteps. It became a non-stop thing of do this to mask the pain of life and my family breaking apart. It was a downward spiral of slowly caring less and less about school, getting in fights every week, having sex after being raped at a party for being too plastered and not knowing why my pants were at my ankles and a used condom was on my dick. 


   I stopped caring about the little things in life. Not looking both ways when I crossed the street, deteoriating friendships, failing grades.... Eventually because of financial hardships and my sister running away from home ( I'd think of her everynight and wonder if she was dead or alive, this created inter-personal turmoil in my life for years ) There was one day while at my mother's house, with my cat and I all alone, I found nothing in the fridge but two pieces of cheese, one of which I shared with my cat. I slowly was starving away and my mother was gone from 5 AM to 1 AM everyday and did not care if there was food around. 


   I began to drug deal to get by.. First it started off with pot then ectasy then cocaine then LSD then shrooms. Eventually the whole drug dealing thing got me in trouble with gangs- selling in their territory and all. I had to leave or get killed... so I fled the state. While out of state I realized that drugs are not a way to mask  pain. If you want to live past troubling times, exercise until you feel safe with yourself and you can have confidence with your body and the feeling of safety in the ability to defend yourself. If the thoughts of suicide pass your head, believe that doing that will create a viscious cycle for the people around you. It will create more pain and more anguish than you escaping it. 


   I had thoughts of suicide before and was even very close to it until I found something worth living for. My father..


    Now in terms of healing and finding yourself again after so much grieving and suffering, you need to learn to love yourself, be confident, even cocky, dont give a fuck about anything. Learn to love again, do something as a hobby like art or poetry. These things have saved me from suffering and my past. Pouring my emotions out on paper is more theraputic than any therapist or friendship I've had. Also smoking cigarettes has helped. ( I feel a sense that they will never leave me, as others have in the past ). 


   Remember, time heals all wounds. As for relationships, realize that you must find someone who you can sit down and talk to and have that chemistry of love AND attraction. Your life will change from the everyday mundane tasks to truly BEING happy, because they are the reason why you go on week to week. Yet, this is puppy love. You absolutely need to realize that they need space and don't be a stalker! Let them be their own person, and you be yourself. Being a survivor means nothing, you are still the same as everyone else yet you have a history now. You know you can survive anything that comes your way, just remember that it takes time to heal and be free of your wounds on your heart. Be free. Go live life. Love.


As my dad once said, "Do not ask for a lighter load, but ask for broader shoulders."